Tuesday, March 17, 2009

A few hours ago, with a simple google here, link there, confirming dates and there it was. Three steps had taken me to a direct link clear across the ocean to the town records in County Tipperary, Ireland. I was suddenly looking at a list of her parents, brothers and sisters. Simple and quite amazing.

My grandmother was such a delightful lady who had settled in NYC when she married. She loved St. Patrick's Day. I think she really loved folks celebrating something Irish, and in a big way. When we were young, she would mail us each a religious St. Pat's Day card along with a small cellophane envelope containing real shamrocks from Ireland. One of her sisters would gather them and send them earlier in the month.

So this year, I feel she helped guide me to find this treasure of her family history. Our family line, our wee pot o' gold.

This drawing is of my art director's cat, Miss Miss. I just did a series for her, showing her Miss celebrating each holiday. I'll share more on that later, but today, it's all about St. Patrick's Day.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Work has been pretty scarce lately. My last big assignment was a sample project with designs to woo work from some tough Canadian publisher. I was given a week to render a whitetail deer ecosystem. I used every day of it. The art director loved it, but the publisher didn’t. Oh well. We haven't given up yet.

This is a practice piece from the series that just evolved into…“The Sound of Music”, Montana style. You know, in my own schmaltz’ed up style.

Friday, March 6, 2009

My other brother and his wife journeyed north last week, from their beautiful world in the country, to take me out and about. We were belatedly celebrating our birthdays with our all-time favorites. Enjoying the best curry in town featuring an 11 flight-high view, then an acoustically perfect concert with John Prine. Since my brother just hit the milestone of 50!!! years; they spared no expense with getting the best seats possible. After all, we've loved John Prine and his music for over 35 years now. Wow.

I heard the show was sold out. Everything was going well, until a woman sitting behind me started singing. She sang out loud, very badly and didn't know the words as well as she thought. Clearly this woman had been drinking something that has a very long drunk factor. Okay, I let her enjoy the first two songs, as everyone was so excited; then I gave her the "Please...!" look. She got it - but only for a few minutes, as she was one of those no-short-term-memory drunks. So between songs we had a talk. I used some of John Prine's kind of empathy and, well... I made a new friend. She tried to control herself as best she could then proudly took to "high-fiving" me after each song. I don't do "high-fives" well; I'm always awkward, but I was willing to do whatever it took to enjoy the show. After all, I'm far too familiar with what could go wrong with overly drunk drunks from my spending 13 years intoxicating them in the past. This was obviously some serious time-delayed karma from my younger days. So I dealt with it, the best I could.

With three-fourths of the show over, he sang a sad song. My drunken friend started to sob. Out loud. Through the entire song. When the song was over, she left. Without even a goodbye.

So the next morning when I awoke, I reflected on the show and wondered if my drunken friend remembered it at all. A few days later I read a very favorable review of the show in the RFT where the author states he sat in front of a very loud drunk. His drunk not only sang out loud, he also hollered a lot. Again, friends should NOT let friends sing drunk (in public)!

You know… the older I get, the fonder I am of public stockades.

(The drawing is a cleaned & colored scan from a rough promo I had done for a local band... oh, about 20 years ago. I revised this to show "X" generally marking my brother's little piece of paradise.)

"Horse"

(crayon on paper Nov.1961) .......... My first appreciated art. Drawn for my father when I was nearly four and he actually framed it. He always encouraged my artistic side. When deciding on college, he seriously suggested my moving to San Francisco to draw portraits on street corners. He meant this is a good way. ................................... Art. Creativity. Inspiration. Dreams. Dreaming aloud is always allowed. I will keep these things here to share. Simply.................................. ...Sharon